The Wild Girl : The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932 | Jim Fergus

The Wild Girl : The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932 | Jim Fergus | A Haunting Story

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The Wild Girl : Th...

	The Wild Girl : The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932 Jim Fergus Amazon Remainders Account, 2005 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Great ride on the wild side!

"The Wild Girl" is an incredible story set in the Mexican/American southwest of the early 1930s. In his second novel Fergus explores the Sierra Madre Mountains as well as his imaginative abilities to craft a story of adventure, compassion and love against its backdrop. Ned Giles is a teenage Chicagoan orphaned by the death of his mother and the suicide of his father. When threatened with the possibility of foster care, he heads west to pursue his dreams of photography. While Giles pursues his dreams, Billy Flowers, hunter of mountain-lions, trees an Apache girl, Chideh, who has been separated from her tribe. Chideh's and Giles' lives converge in an Arizona town where an expedition is forming to search for the kidnapped son of a wealthy Mexican rancher. As the distance between the hunters and the hunted shortens the adventure and danger intensifies, climaxing at a showdown that earned the author a permanent place on my favorite authors list.

Populated with characters that are as rich as its landscape, "The Wild Girl" opens a window to Native American history that makes me want to know more. The story is revealed by way of notebook entries made by Ned Giles during his cross country trip to Arizona and subsequent travels with the expedition. This first person approach works well for the story, creating a level of trust and intimacy that only a first person account of what these characters lived through could provide. The novel is well researched, evident first by the historical feel rendered from the text then confirmed by the bibliographical note at the end. I finished the novel wanting to keep in touch with some of the people that I met on the expedition and that's a credit to the easily accessible writing and wonderfully creative story telling of Fergus. The paperback edition comes with a Reading Group Guide and an excerpt from a conversation with the author to boot! I'm highly recommending this book and anxiously waiting for the next. Enjoy!

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A Haunting Story

This is a beautiful, haunting story. Jim Fergus is a wonderful writer with a special talent for making the reader really hear and see the people and locations of which he writes.

This is the story of seventeen year old orphan Ned Giles who wants excitement and adventure after his parents' death in 1932. He leaves Chicago to find his fortune on The Great Apache Expedition, which is detemined to find the last wild band of Apaches in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico and retrieve a Mexican boy they have kidnapped. You already know after the opening chapter of the book that there won't be a happy ending, but go along for the ride with Ned anyway. You won't regret it.

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John Mallery

Rarely do I read a book where the story line and characters stay with me any longer than when I start my next book. ( about once a week ).
But 'The Wild Girl' will be with me for a long time. Truely one of the best reads I have experienced.

Another great read

Another great story from Jim Fergus imagination about Indians, whites and the north American far west . Bought this book after having read his first novel "One thousand white women...". Will read it again for pleasure when it will come back to me.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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